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Squatters may have caused fire in vacant Yonkers theater

YONKERS, NY — The shuttered Kimball Theatre was the victim of another fire, possibly due to squatters living in the abadoned building.

Fitzpatrick said the cause of the fire was unknown and under investigation, but he noted that the building’s gas and electricity have been cut off for years since a devastating, three-alarm fire on Nov. 16, 2004, that started in an adjacent laundromat.

That fire gutted the movie house — at the time a furniture store — and it caused other adjacent businesses to close.

In 2008 the Cottage International Development Group and Glenman Construction, both of Yonkers, reached out to city officials about developing a 200-unit housing complex at the site of the theater and adjoining plots of land.